Welcome to my blog---an eyes-open, no-holds-barred exploration of Western and Eastern spirituality, mindfulness, philosophy and literature. A member of the Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association, I lectured at the NSW Institute of Psychiatry to mental health workers for 14 years and at the University of Technology, Sydney to law students for 16 years. My interests include metaphysics, the psychology of religion, transformative ritual, mythology and addiction recovery.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

I
had a uncle who was a very wise man. I called him Uncle Dick, because he was my
uncle and he was called … Dick.

Uncle
Dick was a truck driver, and I know that he had limited formal education, but
he was very wise. You know, most of the so-called learned people I’ve met in my
life---and I’ve spent much of my life working with academics and in
academia---are little more than educated idiots. I guess I have to include
myself in that category. Back to my Uncle Dick. He was wise. He used to say to
me, ‘Jonesy, you never go [that is, die] before your time.’ He would say that
whenever someone died or whenever the subject of death was being discussed. ‘You
never go before your time,’ he would say.

It
took me years to understand what my uncle meant until one day a priest friend
of mine told me that his mother used to say, ‘Whatever is, is best.’ I had
heard that statement before, and even then I was aware of a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox [pictured left] entitled ‘Whatever Is—Is Best’ …

Sometimes by the heart's unrest,

And to grow means often to suffer --

But whatever is -- is best.

There
is a Zenkōan
called ‘Everything is best’, and it goes like this. When Banzan was walking
through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his
customer. ‘Give me the best piece of meat you have,’ said the customer. ‘Everything
in my shop is the best,’ replied the butcher. ‘You cannot find here any piece
of meat that is not the best.’ At these words Banzan became enlightened.

Everything
is best, not necessarily because whatever is, is good, but because whatever is,
is what is. Our problems only happen when we resist whatever is, when we fight
against whatever is. If we can accept what is---as being our present reality---the
problems caused by non-resistance vanish. Now, that doesn’t mean we should not
seek to change things for the better. We must fight against injustice, cruelty,
oppression and discrimination. However, when it comes to that which truly
cannot be changed, acceptance is the way to go. Whatever we resist, persists. Listen to these wonderful words from the ‘Big Book’
of Alcoholics
Anonymous:

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.
When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or
situation---some fact of my life---unacceptable to me, and I can find no
serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly
the way it is supposed to be at this moment.

These days, I have a bit of a problem with those words 'exactly the way it is supposed to be'. I would prefer to say, 'exactly the way it is'. Be that as it may, the point being made about the need for acceptance and non-resistance is a very valid one.

Now,
back to my uncle, who said, ‘You never go before your time.’ Well, whenever a
person goes---that is, dies---that is their time to go. Now, don’t get me
wrong. I don't believe in predestination or anything like that. I am simply
saying that a person cannot die earlier than when they actually do die. Some
people live a long life while others die young. There is a certain injustice in
that at times, but the point is that none of those people died before their
time to die. Some may retort, ‘But, surely when someone is murdered, they die
before their time?’ Really? Whenever you die is the time that you die. You cannot die before you die. The
difficulty some have with accepting the truth of this statement shows the
extent of our non-resistance to this self-evident truth.

Whatever
is, is best. Everything in my shop is the best. You never die before your time.

Life
is what it is. Accept it and move on. Death is what it is. Accept it and move
on.

Monday, October 26, 2015

That
was the directive given to my colleagues and me in a government department
in which I was working as a lawyer. This happened over 35 years ago, but I remember the occasion as if it were yesterday. The directive came from the head lawyer, who was
quite a whimsical fellow. We all thought he was a little odd, but I have since
learned that we are all more than a little odd---each in our own way. Actually,
the directive is a very sound one. Too many of us walk aimlessly, whether at work or
elsewhere. We walk without a sense of purpose and without determination.

I ask
you this. How many times have you walked from one room of your house to
another, and when you get to where you were headed you can’t remember why you
wanted to go into that room? Even young people admit to me that this phenomenon
happens to them from time to time. How many times do you drive your car from
one suburb to the next and when you get to your destination you have no
recollection of having driven along certain streets? It happens quite often,
doesn’t it? Scary, isn’t it? We were not fully aware. We were not aware that we
were at least at times aware. And we were not aware that we were at times
unaware. In short, we were mindless instead of mindful.

There is a deliberateness and intentionality about
mindfulness. It is something done ‘on purpose’---that is, with conscious awareness. It is anything
other than living and acting aimlessly---that is, mindlessly.

Whatever you may be doing---eating, walking, speaking,
reading, driving a car---do it with conscious awareness of the process of
eating, walking, speaking, reading, driving, or whatever the activity may be.
This requires that we consciously direct
our attention and awareness to the doing of the activity in question. All too
often, we make no conscious attempt to maintain our focus and attention on what
we are doing. So, when our attention shifts---as it inevitably will from time
to time---we make no conscious attempt to bring our attention back to the
activity. Instead, we’re off on a mental movie of some sort in which we are the
producer, director and star.

Here's some good news---the regular and systematic practice of mindfulness as well as mindfulness meditation will strengthen your ability to maintain conscious awareness of the
action of the present moment from one moment to the next.

You can start right now. The next time you walk around the office, to the shops, or
from one room of your house to another---walk purposefully, and not just purposely. Walking purposely simply means that you mean to walk, that is, you're doing it on purpose. Well, of course you are walking intentionally, otherwise you wouldn't be doing it at all---unless perhaps you're sleepwalking. But are you walking purposefully? Are you mindful of the regularity of the pace of your walking, the movement of your body, the straightness and balance of your spine, the position of your head, the weight of your arms as they swing by your side, the stretch of your stride, and the sensation of your feet pressing against the floor or earth and then rising again step after step?

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to take great, big strides
or walk very quickly. It means to walk with regular, measured paces, being
conscious of every step you take and ever-mindful of the purpose of your
walking. It means being in control of what you’re doing. It means walking, and
looking ahead, with ease, confidence, deliberateness and of course conscious
awareness of the action of walking---one step after another---from one moment to the next. In other words, walking in a relaxed way while be-ing totally with the present moment.

‘What is the path? What is truth?’ asked the disciple. ‘Walk
on!’ said the Zen master. Purposefully.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Despite a few sceptical and very negative party poopers and
detractors around the globe, mindfulness has well and truly come of age, proved
itself, and received formal recognition both in the halls of medicine and in the
corridors of power.

On 20 October 2015 the United Kingdom
became the first country in the world to publish an all-party parliamentary
report on mindfulness.

The Mindful Nation UK reportis the result of a 12-month inquiry by
the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness into how mindfulness training
can benefit UK services and institutions.

The report's recommendations include: (i) commissioning mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) in the NHS for the 580,000 adults at
risk of recurrent depression each year, in line with National Institute For
Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines; (ii) creating
three mindfulness Teaching Schools (to be selected by the Department of
Education) to pioneer mindfulness teaching in schools; (iii) training
government staff in mindfulness, especially in the health, education and
criminal justice sectors; and (iv)researching
the use of mindfulness training for offender populations in the criminal
justice system.

Jenny Edwards CBE FRSA, Chief Executive of
the Mental Health Foundation said:'The Mindful Nation UK report comes at a pivotal time for mindfulness and for action on mental health. The evidence tells us that, properly taught, the practice of mindfulness helps many people maintain good mental health and to sustain recovery after illness.'At the same time the pressure on mental health crisis services has never been more intense. We know that three quarters of people with mental health problems do not receive care and treatment.'We need to give serious consideration to the role mindfulness can play in helping to reduce the chances of experiencing mental health problems and to ensure that it becomes available to the communities who have the greatest risks. This has important implications for public policy. We are delighted to see a cross party consensus emerging that it is time for a fresh approach at a national level.'

I am pleased that there are now companies
in various countries that are dedicated to promoting mindfulness in the
workplace and offer executive coaching and ethical recruitment solutions based
on mindfulness and ethical management principles to sustainable businesses and
projects. Unlike the mercenary 'big-end-of-town' companies, these companies don't only care about the 'bottom line'. They genuinely care about the welfare of people as well. They are truly compassionate. And I know this to be true---you can be compassionate and efficient and effective as well.

Friday, October 16, 2015

I
don’t do it often, but I don’t dislike a walk through a cemetery. In fact, I
find it quite enjoyable—up to a point. A cemetery is such a great place to
contemplate the eternal and the unknown. Media
vita in morte sumus. In the midst of life we are in death. Mors janua vitæ. Death is the gateway to life. Having said that, too
much contemplation of death and the dead results only in a morbid and
melancholy state of mind. Life is for the living. I say that with no disrespect
for the dead.

French symbolist poet Paul Valéry’s famous 1922 poem ‘Le Cimetière marin’ (‘The Seaside Cemetery’ or ‘The
Graveyard by the Sea’), set in the cemetery at Sète where Valéry [pictured] himself is now buried, is a sublime meditation on life and death. The poem is also a 'call for action', with the message (ugh) that life is for living now. The
tension between being and non-being, between action and inactive contemplation,
was a perennial theme of Paul Valéry ('At times I think and at times I am'), but in ‘Le Cimetière marin’ the poet,
after coming to accept the inevitability of death, boldly proclaims the need to
choose life and eternal change.

Valéry's deep reverence for life, even in the midst of a place of death, is palpable. The poet begins by describing a calm 'sea in flame'---a roof-like expanse of seemingly unending 'sea forever starting and re-starting' ('Quite that roof, where the doves are walking') under a blazing sun at noon. There is a tranquil state of ‘celestial calm’---‘palpable calm, visible
reticence’---when ‘thought has had its hour’. Life is a ‘temple of time, within
a brief sigh bounded’. For about three-quarters of the poem Valéry is lost in
self-absorbed but numbed meditative contemplation---‘long vistas of celestial calm!’ Intimations of immortality, you could call it. However, his
contemplation of the mystery of death (‘The dead lie easy, hidden in earth
where they / Are warmed and have their mysteries burnt away’) morphs into a
mindful awareness of the inevitability of death---intimations of mortality---notwithstanding the seeming endlessness of life itself (Break, body, break this pensive mould'):

Even
as a fruit's absorbed in the enjoying,

Even
as within the mouth its body dying

Changes
into delight through dissolution,

So
to my melted soul the heavens declare

All
bounds transfigured into a boundless air,

And
I breathe now my future's emanation.

Le Cimetière marin at Sète, France

In
time, however, the wind begins to stir and waves start forming on the sea. A
new state of consciousness arises in the poet. Self-absorption gives way to
conscious awareness and exuberance. Even defiance. True
meditation---mindfulness—is not a state of reverie or contemplation of the ineffable. Valéry once said, 'In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.' That is so true of life as well. Contemplating the ineffable tends only to result in existential angst and confusion. And forget about beliefs. The ever-skeptical and agnosticValéry spoke well when he said, 'That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.' Mindfulness is something altogether different; it involves no beliefs. It is an intense and intentional state of ceaseless change and action and not just awareness. Mindfulness
is for the living, of the living, and is in the living of our days---all days, every day, and every
moment of each day. Back to 'The Seaside Cemetery':

No, no! Arise! The future years
unfold.

Shatter, O body, meditation's
mould!

And, O my breast, drink in the
wind's reviving!

A freshness, exhalation of the
sea,

Restores my soul . . .
Salt-breathing potency!

Let's run at the waves and be
hurled back to living!

Yes, mighty sea with such wild
frenzies gifted

(The panther skin and the rent
chlamys), sifted

All over with sun-images that
glisten,

Creature supreme, drunk on your
own blue flesh,

Who in a tumult like the deepest
hush

Bite at your sequin-glittering
tail -- yes, listen!

The wind rises! . . . We must try
to live!

The huge air opens and shuts my
book: the wave

Dares to explode out of the rocks
in reeking

Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered
pages!

Break, waves! Break up with your
rejoicing surges

This quiet roof where sails like
doves were pecking.

The movement of the poem---note, by the way, how the rhythm of the verses cleverly mimicks the sea's movement---has now gone full circle, with the doves in the opening line now transformed into white sailing boats. Doves fly high. Not so boats. Not so us. From intimations of immortaility to ones of mortality. And what of the dead? Valéry refers to them as having been dissolved into a 'dense absence'. Not a mere absence but a 'dense' one. How can an absence be dense? When it is ineffable, unreachable and yet ever so sublime. Jesus
is recorded as having said, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?’
(Lk 24:5) and ‘Let the dead bury their own dead’ (Lk 9:60). Have you lost a
loved one? I lost my parents over 30 years ago and I still miss them. I seldom
go to the cemetery where their cremated remains are buried. My parents are not
there. I do not look for them there. They are to be found in the very
livingness of life itself. I am reminded of some beautiful words from the collection of poems This, My Son by the Australian writer
Joan Kinmont---words I've often read out at funerals, words that capture the essence of Paul Valéry’s poem:

Then your dear, distant voice

Broke through the night ...

'Seek me in the world

If you would have me near;

Seek me in the light.

Darkness and defeat

Entomb me here.

Dear, lift your eyes above

To beauty and the sky.

Seek me in the light.

Death is not the end.

There is no death.'

Your voice spoke in the night.

Mindfulness---like
life itself---is not for day-dreamers. It is for those who want to live life
fully and deeply for so long as it lasts. Mindfulness is not escapism. It is a
non-judgmental, intentional awareness and experience of life as it unfolds from
one moment to the next.

'The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.' So wrote Valéry. When asked about his enlightenment the Buddha is reported as having said, 'I woke up.' That, my friends, is what mindfulness is all about---waking up ... and staying awake.

Yes,
the wind rises! We must try to live! And
if we live mindfully, that’s even better.

Friday, October 9, 2015

For
many years I taught law at a major university in Sydney, Australia. I still teach law, but not at the same place. I used to see my law students---thousands
of them in total—do the very same thing I did when I was a law student back in the early
to mid-1970s. They---as I did in my time---tried to write down in lectures
everything that I said, or at least everything that they thought that I
thought was important and needed to be known and regurgitated at exam time.

I
well remember when I was a law student. By the way, the present Australian Prime MinisterMalcolm Turnbull was in my law classes way back then. We all
knew then that he would go places. For starters, he told us that he would. No,
not exactly. But we all knew it. He was then the brightest fellow in the room,
and he still is. But I digress.

Anyway,
I would write down everything the lecturer said—well, as much as I could---often not fully understanding the complicated legal doctrines, rules and principles the
lecturer was pontificating about. I always hoped that the lecture material
would make sense to me when I got home. I would read and re-read my notes on
the train going home but seldom would the stuff make much sense to me. So, when
it came my turn to be the lecturer---I had learned a lot more about the law in the 15 or so years after leaving law school---I would say to my students, ‘Now, if you don’t
understand what the hell I’m saying, please
don’t write it down. Just listen. Listen carefully. Ask questions. Do anything,
but don’t just write down what I say in the vain hope that it will all come together
later, for it seldom will.’ Those last few words---'for it seldom will'---would frighten the heebie-jeebies out of the students, but that wasn't really my aim.

Here’s
a little Zen story which is more than a little on the point. It goes like this. A monk came to the celebrated Zen
master Pai-chang and asked, ‘What’s the most wonderful thing in the world?’
Pai-chang replied, ‘I sit on top of this mountain.’ Impressed, the monk paid
homage to the master, ceremonially folding his hands. So, of course, Pai-chang
hit the monk with his keisaku
(stick). We all need to be hit at times with a keisaku---metaphorically speaking, of course. There are many ways
of waking up to the real. I have always favoured the direct, hard-hitting,
no-nonsense approach. Zap! Sock! Kapow! Whack! Whamm! (Shades of TV’s Batman.)

Now,
the monk did not understand the import and significance of Pai-chang’s
statement, ‘I sit on top of this mountain,’ but he felt he had to give the impression that he understood. We are just
like that monk. Someone tells us a joke which we don’t quite understand, but
which we assume is funny, so we laugh nervously. ‘Oh, that is funny,’ we say, hoping that the other person won’t notice that
we don’t get the joke.

Life
can only be experienced from within.
No one can unlock the so-called mysteries of life for us---no priest, minister,
guru or teacher. Direct, immediate and unmediated experience of the real is the
only way to know and understand. We
must learn to listen. That reminds me of J. Krishnamurti’s many encounters with
his audiences. This would happen quite often. Krishnamurti would ask some
metaphysical question, and someone in the audience would respond with some pat
answer such as ‘There is no self,’ or ‘The knower and the known are one.’
Krishnamurti would snap back, ‘He is copying someone.’ The 'someone' was usually Krishnamurti himself. The pat answer annoyed him to no end. He hated having his own words thrown back at him. So do I as a lecturer. Well, maybe not the first time it happens, but certainly after a while it gets more than a bit irritating. Enough said.

Don’t
copy. Don’t write it down. Don’t pretend to understand something when you don’t. Listen
to the voice of the real—that is, the voice of experience as well as reason. Self-knowledge and self-understanding,
gained from a life lived mindfully from one moment to the next, is worth so
much more than all the book knowledge and so-called wisdom of the masters put
together.Note. The photograph at the top left of this post is of the author, on the occasion of his law graduation in 1978 at the University of Sydney.

Friday, October 2, 2015

I do, however, want to say something about prayer. Anyone can prayer---even an
atheist. Listen to the first two verses of thisChristian hymnby the British poet and hymn writerJames Montgomery:

Prayer
is the soul’s sincere desire,
Unuttered or expressed;
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.

Prayer
is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear
The upward glancing of an eye,
When none but God is near.

‘Prayer is the soul’s
sincere desire … unuttered or expressed.’ You don’t have to package or
formulate your words in a Christian form. You don’t even have to verbalise your
desire. Whatever be your sincere desire---whether for yourself, some other
person, or our world---that is your prayer … andaprayer.

Now, there was, in what
I quoted above, that pesky little word ‘God’. Theword ‘God’, if one uses it at all,
means different things to different people. For some, there is no objective
referent at all to the word ‘God’, and I respect that position. The important
thing to keep in mind is this: ‘The word is not the thing.’ That’s something
the Indian spiritual teacherJiddu Krishnamurti[pictured left] used to say over and
over again, and he is right. It’s the reality behind the word
that matters. In other words, don't get hung up on the word ('God'). Instead,
focus on the reality behind, and beyond, the word. Well, I hear some of you
say, what is that reality? What follows is my take on it.

Despite things
constantly coming and going, waxing and waning, there is something unending and
unceasing, something that is beyond time and space itself. It is the
ever-present spirit of life---that is, the very livingness of all life, the
essential oneness of all life, and the self-givingness of life to itself so as
to perpetuate itself. You can call that God if you like. TheNew Testamentsays thatGod is love. That’s pretty good.
Some also use the word ‘God’ to refer to our innate potential perfectibility as
well. That makes some sense too. The really important thing, if you choose to
believe in God at all, is to avoid believing in a tribal, cruel and nasty God.
That sort of belief is very harmful to others. TheBaptistminister and theologian DrHarry Emerson Fosdickonce famously wrote, ‘Better believe
in no God than to believe in a cruel God, a tribal God, a sectarian God. Belief
in God is one of the most dangerous beliefs a man can cherish.’

Me? These days I neither
believe nor disbelieve in a traditional God. I love these words from theJesuitpriest and author Anthony de MelloSJ[pictured
right]: ‘The atheist makes the mistake of denying that of which nothing may be
said ... and the theist makes the mistake of affirming it.’ But, having said
all that, God or no God, prayer is real.

Does prayer really
change things? Well, it can change the pray-er, that is, the person praying,
and when the pray-er changes other things start to change as well. That is not
anything supernatural.

Having said all that, we
should never see ourselves as the end and God as the means to that end. Dr
Fosdick made another good point when he said,‘God
is not a cosmic bellboy for
whom we can press a button to get things.’I think these words from VenerableFulton
J Sheenare also helpful: ‘We
do not pray that we may have good things; we pray rather that we may be good.’

Pray in whatever way
makes sense to you, but do more than pray. There is an Indian proverb, ‘Pray to
God but continue to row to the shore.’ (I have also seen that proverb expressed
as, ‘Call on God, but row away from the rocks.’) There is an Arab proverb that
is very similar: ‘Trust God but tie your camel.’ By all means hold on to your
desires and hopes, butyou---indeed,allof us humans---must do what needs
to be done to bring about positive, lasting change in ourselves and our damaged
world.

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